c. 1947

Pipsan Swanson, a talented designer and daughter of famous Finnish-American architect Eliel Saarinen, started an interior design department within her father's firm at Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan when she was twenty-four. By 1947, Swanson, her husband, J. Robert F. Swanson, and Saarinen together introduced the Saarinen Swanson Group, which included furniture, fabrics, lamps, metalwork, glassware, and pottery, and featured contributions by textile designer Marianne Strengell and architect/designer Benjamin Baldwin, both associated with Cranbrook.This candelabrum was produced for the Saarinen Swanson Group, which was notable for its affordability, flexibility, and modern aesthetic. The design is based on an example the Swansons created for a Michigan client in 1935, and its simplicity and sophistication owes much to Eliel Saarinen's classical modern approach. In 1948, Pipsan Swanson won an award for the candelabrum from The American Institute of Designers.